November 23, 2009
Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 is now in development and will ship in mid November! This year's book will feature articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. If you use this link to purchase the Annual, you will be in the first group to receive it and you'll be supporting THT. 
Rich Barbieri
John Barten Brian Borawski Craig Brown Evan Brunell David Gassko Jonathan Hale Brandon Isleib Chris Jaffe Max Marchi Bruce Markusen Harry Pavlidis Jeff Sackmann Dave Studeman Steve Treder Bryan Tsao Tuck! Dan Turkenkopf Colin Wyers Geoff Young John Brattain And here's the full roster.
Or you can search by:
Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets. Find premium Chicago Cubs tickets and other Chicago tickets at JustGreatTickets.com. Chicago Cubs Tickets Chicago Tickets  All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
Self-flagellationby Jonathan HalketOctober 22, 2009 Jonathan Halket is an economist in New York. He welcomes questions and comments here.
Jonathan said...
Greg - Posted 10/22 at 02:22 PM
Greg Simons said...
Yeah, I was leaning that way - especially since I had all that money to burn. I could have three top closers cheap, which would give me a big leg up in saves and allow me to make deals as the season goes along. We’ll see what happens next spring. Posted 10/22 at 03:10 PM
Sal Paradise said...
If you shift some of your budget for starters to reliable high-talent closers, then you can afford to spend less on the starters because the best relievers will significantly help your rate stats. If closers are going at a discount, and starters aren’t, then feel free to grab the second tier of starters so long as you have first-tier closers. Posted 10/22 at 11:34 PM
Page 1 of 1
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
Do you have a general question or comment for one of THT's writers? Send it in to our weekly mailbag We also welcome unsolicited op-ed pieces of approximately 500 words for consideration. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity and consistency of style. Please include your whole name and location to be considered. If you have a comment about this specific article, please email the writer. |
Nice article, Jonathan. One of my weaknesses is not going for top-dollar players. Most of the time my most-expensive player cost less than just about anyone else’s most-expensive player. This hurt me this season as I had 10% of my budget left over when the auction was done. I need to consider spending more for the best players, because inflation has pushed my league more toward a stars-n-scrubs setup.
Also, closers have become nearly worthless in our league. A few years ago one owner refused to pay for saves at all, punting the category and spending his money elsewhere. The rest of the league has adapted to this, to the point where top closers go for maybe $20, whereas several years ago they would top $30, and the lower-tier guys can be had for $1-$5.
I’m not sure if I should exploit this inefficiency by grabbing the best closers for relatively cheap prices or join the crowd and spend the money elsewhere. Thoughts?